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Experts called the achievement an important advance in the ambitious effort to map the human gene structure and to someday use that knowledge to find the causes and cures of human disease.
The worm, a type of nematode called Caenorhabditis elegans, is as common as dirt. A handful of garden soil contains thousands.
But the animal provides a crucial keyhole view of the vast world of genetics, said Robert Waterston, leader of a Washington University, St. Louis, team that joined with British scientists to find the worm's genes.
"This worm is really an animal just as we are," said Waterston. "It has muscles and many different kinds of cells. And it also ages, just as we do. By and large, it uses the same genes that we do."
By studying genes shared by worm and human, researchers will learn at a molecular level what can go wrong and how to fix it. Such microscopic studies are virtually impossible in humans.
Waterston's team and a group at the Sanger Centre in Cambridge, England, worked together for eight years to identify the worm's 20,000 genes.
To do this, they had to find and sequence about 97 million DNA base pairs, a task that required labs to work around the clock.
"This is an important leap forward," said Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He said the achievement could "profoundly" affect medical science.
"Most of the major pathways that involve life and death and interaction between cells are pretty much (the same) between these worms and humans," Collins said.
By understanding what happens in the worm cells, researchers also learn what happens in human cells. Of the 5,000 best-known human genes, 75 percent have matches in the worm, Collins said.
The human genetic pattern, or genome, has 80,000 genes arranged in 3 billion DNA molecule pairs. About 7 percent of the human genome has been mapped, Collins said.
The worm is a clear-skinned creature whose biological functions can be easily monitored by microscope. A dozen of the animals could perch on a pinhead, but within each is a complex world of genes that perform the same functions as in humans.
"With modern techniques, you can actually watch the action of individual proteins inside this worm," said Waterston. "If that function happens in the worm, then you know the same thing is happening in humans."
Some worm genes are so similar to human genes that researchers have experimentally inserted human genes into the animal and watched as the implant worked perfectly, he said.
Indeed, researchers studying the worm have identified genes that have been linked to Alzheimer's disease, to aging and to some forms of cancer, Waterston said.
"The only reason we know about some proteins in Alzheimer's disease is because there are related proteins in the worms, and the function of these proteins had been determined," he said.
Muscles for genes "map almost one to one" when comparing human and worm, he said. And in the nervous system, some genes discovered first in the worm were later found also to be in humans, even though the worm has only 302 neurons compared to a human's millions.
Scientists began studying the worm after a British researcher identified it as an ideal way to study the nervous system. It has only 959 cells yet reproduces, grows into a mature adult, eats, excretes and dies with many of the cellular interactions of other animals.
Since the studies began in the 1960s, researchers have plotted the development and demise of virtually every cell in the worm's body. They have monitored worm embryos as they grew, cell by cell, into an adult and then have watched the cells age and die.
Such work, Collins said, has provided insights into basic functions common to virtually all multi-celled creatures.
"Now his importance has taken a leap forward by becoming the first animal with his genome completely laid out in front of us," Collins said of the worm.
Earlier researchers had completed gene patterns for single-cell animals and for yeast, but this is the first mapping of an animal with many cells.
The study by the New York-based Alan Guttmacher Institute found that nationwide the number of facilities offering abortions decreased 14 percent between 1992 and 1996, nearly twice the rate of decline of the previous four years. That left the nation with 2,042 providers, nearly one-third fewer than the peak number in 1982.
In Virginia, the number of providers has fallen by 30 percent since the early 1980s, from 81 to 57. The District of Columbia is one of the few jurisdictions in the country where the number increased, from 14 in 1982 to 18 in 1996.
While there has been spotty evidence that the pool of hospitals, doctors' offices and clinics performing abortions has been shrinking, the figures offer firm evidence that the drop is far more precipitous than many had realized and that the trend, rather than slowing, is accelerating. The study is the first broad national survey in four years and the only national source of information on the number and location of providers.
The study's author and other experts attribute the sharp drop to intense opposition from anti-abortion forces, including picketing and violence that in a few cases has led to the deaths of physicians and clinic personnel.
But also driving the decline, they say, is a changing health care system. Fewer doctors are being trained to perform abortions, providers are moving out of rural areas, and physicians and hospitals are increasingly sending patients to specialized clinics, where 91 percent of abortions are now performed.
"It's a trend that has been taking place for a long time, but has become more and more critical," said Jeannie Rosoff, president of the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on reproductive issues. "If you live in a rural area of Mississippi, you have very few choices of providers, the distances become larger."
Andrea Young, acting president of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, said providers in this area are seeing women from farther away as facilities elsewhere become harder to find and more states enact laws requiring teens to inform their parents before they can get an abortion.
"The parental notification requirements now extend all the way to Florida down the Eastern Seaboard. We had a patient from North Carolina" at one local clinic, she said.
Eighty-nine of the nation's metropolitan areas do not have abortion facilities. Another 12 provide so few abortions that they are classified as essentially lacking a provider since the chances of getting a doctor to perform one are so low. Among them are Amarillo, Texas, Yuma, Ariz., Rapid City, S.D., and Athens, Ga.
Wayne Goldner, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Manchester, N.H., said his office is picketed once a week by anti-abortion protesters, adding that his home has also drawn picketers and that he is often the subject of harsh letters to the local newspaper. Goldner said many of his colleagues have chosen not to perform abortions.
"It would be very easy to eliminate abortion from my comprehensive services," said Goldner, whose office is one of just 16 facilities in New Hampshire that perform abortions.
Lois Utley, who directs the "MergerWatch Project" for Family Planning Advocates of New York State, cited a study that found 84 health care mergers or other partnerships over the last decade between Catholic and non-Catholic facilities, with half of those resulting in either an elimination or reduction of abortion and other reproductive services _ including infertility treatment, contraception and sterilizations.
While abortion facilities have been closing, the nation's abortion rate has been falling. Recent studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Guttmacher have reported abortion rates falling 13 percent between 1992 and 1995, and flattening since then. Researchers say that improved contraceptive use and the aging of the Baby Boom generation is reducing the number of pregnancies.
Abortion opponents tie the decline in abortions and providers to a shift in public sentiment against the procedure, triggered in part by the national debate over the so-called "partial birth" abortions.
"People have become much more educated about abortion. They are rejecting it," said Laura Echevarria, director of media relations for the National Right to Life Committee.
The deal, experts said, will increase Aetna's power to raise medical premiums and cut payments to doctors and hospitals even as it reduces the already diminished choices available to consumers and employers shopping for health coverage.
Aetna said the deal would offer consumers access to a broader network of physicians and hospitals.
while helping it study and improve medical care using data on a vastly expanded patient base.
The company said the deal would generate savings of $130 million to $150 million a year, partly through the elimination of overlapping jobs.
"I hate to over-dramatize, but this is an industry-redefining transaction," Aetna Chairperson and chief executive Richard L. Huber said in a media conference call.
With the purchase of Prudential, Aetna will provide health benefits to 22.4 million people nationwide. In some states, it will command as much as 30 percent of the market, Huber said. The deal is subject to regulatory approval, but Huber said he does nor foresee antitrust problems.
Aetna said it would strive to avoid problems that followed its 1996 acquisition of U.S. Healthcare, when it struggled to combine the two companies' operations, causing confusion and delays in handling of medical claims and unforeseen costs for the company.
But some experts expressed skepticism, noting that customer service problems have often followed mergers in the rapidly consolidating health care industry.
"It's not going to work at all," said economist J.D. Kleinke, author of "Bleeding Edge," a recent book on the industry. "The greater and greater a behemoth you create in health insurance, the more unmanageable it becomes."
Prudential would be Aetna's third major acquisition in the past few years. Last summer, it bought the NYLCare health business of New York Life for. In 1996 it paid for U.S. Healthcare.
For investors, "the fact that you're layering Prudential on top of US Healthcare on top of NYLCare just increases the possible integration risk," said analyst Gary Frazier of BT Alex. Brown Inc. But Frazier noted that Aetna negotiated an insurance policy of sorts to protect it from unexpected losses. If medical expenses on the Prudential business exceed targets, Prudential will share the cost.
Aetna shares closed at $79.18 3/4 yesterday, down $1.621/2.
Aetna had considered buying Prudential's health care business as early as a year and a half ago. In the end, the price declined to a point where "it was a proverbial offer we couldn't refuse," Huber said.
At about $200 a patient, Aetna is buying members of Prudential's managed-care plans at a third the price it paid for NYLCare members and a tenth the price it paid for U.S. Healthcare subscribers.
The price reflects the overall decline in the managed-care industry's fortunes and the weak condition of Prudential's health care business, experts said.
For Prudential, the deal provides a long-sought exit from a money-losing enterprise that a company spokesperson yesterday described as "not a good fit" with the financial services that are Prudential's main focus. Prudential joins a long line of insurance companies to divest health care businesses, including Travelers, Metropolitan Life, and New York Life.
The prospect of an Aetna-Prudential colossus worries physicians, consumer advocates and some industry analysts. Faced with fewer choices, it could become harder for people to influence the quality and cost of health coverage by voting with their feet, observers said.
For big national employers looking for a company large enough to provide benefits to workers across the country, "what you have now is primarily three major health plans" - Aetna U.S. Healthcare, United HealthCare, and Cigna, said consultant Richard Sinni of Watson Wyatt Worldwide, who helps corporations choose health plans.
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A group of senior Palestinians led by Yasser Arafat voted overwhelmingly to declare clauses of the PLO charter calling for Israel's destruction null and void, a key condition of the Clinton-brokered Wye River agreement two months ago.
Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian security chief, said the Palestinian Authority would take steps to curtail riots sparked by Israel's refusal to release prisoners jailed on anti-Israel charges.
Selim Zanoun, who announced the decision by the Palestine Central Council to nullify the offending passages, said the larger Palestine National Council will not vote again on the matter when it meets Monday.
Israel insists the full council formally vote to void the passages and has said that if there is no vote on Monday, it will not implement the next troop withdrawal scheduled under the Wye Agreement.
The Monday meeting "will be only to listen to President Clinton's speech and President Arafat. ... There will be no vote," said Zanoun, chair of the PNC.
Clinton is arriving Saturday night for a three-day visit meant to celebrate Wye, but that has turned into an effort to salvage it.
David Bar-Illan, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, praised Thursday's vote, but warned that Israel hasn't dropped its demand for a PNC vote on Monday.
"We expect that they will ... vote in an unequivocal matter," Bar-Illan said, if Israel is to continue to implement the Wye agreement.
The Palestinians have said that the meeting Monday will "affirm" the annulment of the offensive passages but have not said exactly what that means. Arafat said the procedure was an internal Palestinian matter: "It's not their business.''
It is unlikely Clinton would side with Israel in such a dispute because it would mean that the main purpose of his visit, to usher in the next stage of the Wye agreement, has failed.
Zanoun said yesterday's vote by 95 Palestine Central Council members present was 81 for, seven against and seven abstaining. Twenty-nine members were absent for the vote, which reaffirmed a letter that Arafat had sent Clinton declaring the articles null and void.
White House spokesperson David Leavy described that as "an important and welcomed step toward implementing the Wye accords.''
Immediately after the PNC session, 5 percent of the West Bank is to be transferred from Israeli control to joint jurisdiction.
Netanyahu, who has frozen the pullback over what he claimed were systematic Palestinian violations of the peace accord, said yesterday he has ordered the Israeli army to deal with Palestinian riots with a "firm hand.''
Stone-throwing protests have swept through the West Bank in recent days, and thousands of Palestinians marched yesterday in the funeral procession of a 17-year-old stone mason, Jihad Iyad, who was killed by Israeli army gunfire a day earlier.
Netanyahu says the Palestinian leadership is responsible for the riots, an accusation the Palestinians have denied - although Rajoub, the security chief, acknowledged that the Clinton administration also had pressured the authority to take control of the streets.
"The Americans want the situation to calm down," he said. "It's in their interest with President Clinton's visit to the area.''
He said that he was taking steps "to calm the situation.''
The riots erupted after Israel released its first batch of prisoners, as agreed under Wye - and most were common criminals. Netanyahu has said he will not release killers or members of militant Islamic groups.
Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said yesterday that the Palestinians had accepted a compromise worked out by Clinton's envoy to the region: All three sides would go through the list of security prisoners one by one.
"The success of (Clinton's) trip is connected with stability and quiet," Erekat said. "But for stability you need a convincing equation, to solve the issue of the prisoners.''
Danny Naveh, another Netanyahu adviser, said the Palestinians must explicitly agree that killers and militants will not be released.
"If the Palestinians accept this principle, that Israel is the one to determine the categories ... I believe we can move ahead," Naveh said.
Israeli hard-liners, including Cabinet ministers, have said Clinton's visit is conferring statehood status on the Palestinian areas.
On Thursday, signs reading "Clinton go home" were strung along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway and on walls in Jerusalem. Posters showing a photo montage of Clinton wearing a checkered headdress, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, were plastered on some walls.
If they return, "they won't enter," Latif Nsayyif Jassim, a member of the party's leadership, told a news conference on the steps of the two-story, stucco building in Baghdad.
The U.N. inspectors, who are carrying out an intensive week of searches in Baghdad and elsewhere, insist they have the right under U.N. resolutions to examine any site without conditions.
A team of 12 inspectors was turned back Wednesday from the regional office of the party - one of four in the capital. The team was asked for a written declaration of what they sought, said the Iraqi News Agency. They refused and left the premises, it said.
In Washington, Clinton administration officials said yesterday that Iraq's latest rejection of U.N. weapons inspectors "doesn't bode well" and that Iraq should not test American resolve. The United States has threatened to attack Iraq to force compliance.
Defense Secretary William Cohen said Iraq's refusal to allow inspectors access to Baath Party offices creates a "very serious situation" that could prompt a military attack without warning.
He indicated that a military strike does not appear imminent, however. Some 23,900 U.S. troops are in the Persian Gulf region, plus thousands more aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and its battle group.
The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Richard Butler, condemned Iraq's latest defiance, and a British Foreign Office spokesman called the problem over the inspections "a serious concern."
"Iraq has undertaken to provide full cooperation. Its response so far is not, in our view, consistent with full cooperation," the spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.
The office in dispute is in a slightly unkempt building behind black gates in the Adhamiya neighborhood near the Tigris River. Its windows are barred with iron grates. No signs are outside, but there is a party emblem above the door and a large portrait of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein near the main entrance.
Jassim, wearing a black beret and olive drab uniform, insisted Thursday that the office was private property and it was his decision whether anyone could enter. He said the party dealt with political matters - and not the weapons of mass destruction U.N. inspectors are seeking.
"My base is protected, and no one can enter except a party member or an Iraqi national," said Jassim, a former information minister who is the Baath Party chief in Baghdad.
If the inspectors try to return, he said, "the answer will be the same."
Jassim said there was "no justification" for a weapons search of the office, where he said inspectors would not find "anything inside that is banned or prohibited."
Jassim's comments were the latest in mixed signals coming out of the leadership in the Iraqi capital.
Just a day earlier, Iraq's oil minister, Lt.. Amer Mohammed Rashid, who has been a top weapons negotiator, said Iraqi escorts were wrong in declaring the site sensitive. That seemed to suggest the U.N. team should not have been barred.
Iraqi newspapers carried the official agency report on the incident Wednesday. But surprisingly, no newspaper mentioned it in editorials, the usual arena for fierce criticism of inspectors.
Neither state-run radio nor the official agency carried any news of Jassim's statement at the Baath Party office.
Earlier yesterday, a full contingent of inspectors resumed searches of suspected weapons sites.
As many as 140 inspectors on regular teams are working in Iraq, as well as teams of experts who have arrived in recent weeks. All together, they number a little less than 200.
"Everyone's gone out today, attempting to carry on their normal activities," said Caroline Cross, the inspectors' spokeswoman. "We're just carrying on with our scheduled activities."
Cross said the teams had made no changes in their routine.
"There is no reason why we should stop," she said.
She declined to say whether U.N. teams would try to re-enter the contentious Baath Party site.
The Iraqi news agency said eight teams made surprise visits to 12 sites yesterday. It said a team headed by Australian Roger Hill visited a site related to national security and a residential home.
"A woman and her children looked bewildered as two women inspectors entered their home," the agency quoted Gen. Hussam Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, as saying. "This behavior will always be a shame on the Special Commission and those who lead it."
He said an eight-member biological team, headed by Briton David Kelly, arrived in Iraq on yesterday to replace another team that left after ending their duties.
The inspectors must certify that Iraq has dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, long-range missiles and programs to build them before the U.N. Security Council will lift an oil embargo and other sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The sanctions have devastated Iraq's economy.
12-11-98
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